Company A
by Eventhebadpennamesaretaken
Summary: When she cut all her hair off, Sakura never planned on being recruited for the War. [AU]


Disclaimer; I wish.

xx

The room was barely a room, a tent quickly up righted and a small upside down crate placed on the dirt floor. A larger crate was placed next to it, a pathetic substitute for a chair and desk.

Sitting on that rotting crate was the captain, a young, handsome man, with long dark hair and even darker eyes, reading some important looking documents.

He hated this job, but it was a job he had to do. Finishing the work his grandfather, father, and older brother before him had began.

War.

xx

When his grandfather was the general, a war had broken out within the North and the South. The original reasons it began are clouded and distorted, but there are many rumors. Some say that it was when the South tried to conquer the north, unprovoked. These people are naturally from the North. Others claim that it was when the North sent somebody tried to assassinate the South's leader for no reason at all. These people are naturally from the South. But it doesn't matter how it started because the War is an ugly brutal thing, a ravenous beast, taking lives and crushing homes.

So here she is, standing in front of the mirror, with a scissor placed threateningly against her long pink hair, almost daring herself to cut it.

_I am going to do this, I swear it, I am._

She thinks long and hard and with a twitch of her finger, wisps of silken hair falls to the floor of the old rotting bathroom floor.

_I'm ready_, she thinks.

xx

When Haruno Sakura was eleven years old, her parents were killed in a raid. Ever since then, she was been alone, hiding out in bomb shelters and soup kitchens.

So when a massive riot began in their city, in no longer became safe for young women to even think about going out in the night and sometimes even daylight. So Sakura lived for a while like that, never venturing out of the small rotten old house that could crumble on top of her, starving without food. Sometimes, when people walked past, she could swipe a loaf of bread that fell as they hurried away from the shattered glass windows of the nearby grocery store.

But when it became hard to survive, Sakura made a choice. She would cut her hair so to disguise herself as a boy and travel to the South, which she heard from rumors, had less riots and whose economy was much better.

But the South could very much be like the North, or even worse, and the trek across barren battlefields would be dangerous.

But she pressed on, walking further, bracing herself for the pungent stink of the rotting corpse piled high out of the city. The smell in the town was bad enough, but occasionally, the military might pass through and clean up the bodies and dump them on the outskirts.

But as she walked, she felt her legs get more weary and sore, especially since she had been living in a cramped environment for a while. Also, the lack of exercise made her muscles weak and tight.

She stopped a moment to rub her muscles, feeling wetness at the back of her eyes. Sakura hated how she would sob when something small and trivial happened but when something large and important did, she was as dry as a desert.

That moment where she stopped to massage her sore muscles, would almost kill her.

xx

The young Lieutenant was driving on the outside of town in the rickety old army truck that the military had provided. Every morning, he would do sweeps around town to make sure there wasn't _too_ much crime and recruit men and boys for the war. He wasn't sure why he was ordered to do this anymore because crime had skyrocketed and all the men and boys were either already recruited, or had gone into hiding. Or dead.

He just wanted to get back to the camp and catch up on some sleep.

Then, just as he was about to turn around, he saw a boy, kneeling in the middle of the road. He couldn't be more that fifteen years old, give or take a few. Or maybe he was just small for his age. But he had received orders to recruit anyone from twelve to fifty. He wondered why he had never seen this boy around before.

Nevertheless, he motioned with his right hand, and about five men in uniforms jumped out of the armored truck and grabbed the new recruit.

The weirdest thing about this boy, was that he had pink hair.

xx

Sakura almost had a seizure when as she was sitting down in the middle of the road, she suddenly felt a more than a couple of hands clamp on her arms and shoulders and drag her over to a car with a cover that obviously stated that it was military.

"Shit!" she whispered under her breath. She had forgotten about the recruitment sweeps.

_Stupid, stupid, stupid!_ she shouted inside her head. She had lived for seventeen years on the street and one month in total confinement and she had already forgotten the basic rules of survival.

The men loaded her onto a car and pushed her down on the bench.

A rather burly looking one with whiskers growing wildly on his chin and a cigar dangling out of his mouth muttered, "Sit."

_I'm already sitting, since you were so kind to give me a choice,_ she had a quip ready to use but held it back. Her father had always said she had a sharp tongue. But he had warned her to hold it back because, _"There is no use for a witty girl in this city,"_

So she stayed quiet, and tapped her foot anxiously.

Maybe she could leave the camp while everybody was sleeping and sneak over to the nearest town where she would be more careful. Yes, that is what she would do.

The plan quickly formulated in her head and she nodded, satisfied and crossed her legs. She placed her hands neatly on her lap, ready for whatever may come.

"What are you, gay?"

The burly man said glaring at her position.

"Huh?" she replied, suddenly confused and disorientated.

"I said, why are you sitting like a woman, boy?"

Sakura quickly uncrossed her legs and placed her elbows on her knees.

"No reason." she said quickly.

xx

As the truck slowly rattled up the camp, Sakura felt a slow fall sensation in her stomach. She didn't expect it to be this closely guarded. A tall fence curled over the area and barbed wire sat atop it, looking quite menacing. There was also a few signs warning that the fence was electrocuted and there were armed sentries guarding at all times. Looked like escaping would be harder than she thought.

The truck finally came to a complete stop and the men all jumped out of it, yawning and stretching. The big man held onto Sakura's arm and brought her over to the "quarantine."

The "quarantine" was a stand with a curtain surrounding it and a showerhead over it. A shower. A cheap, fold up shower, but a shower nonetheless. Sakura almost cried with joy. The big man gave her a set of camouflage uniforms and a big coat for winter wear and a t-shirt for summer uniforms.

He grunted and motioned for the showers and she happily made her way over. Thank the heavens, maybe the army was a good thing.

xx

"Sir, new recruits." a soldier popped his head into the tent and quickly disappeared after repeating his message.

Uchiha Sasuke stood up, tired and annoyed. He was not happy about this. He hated new recruits. They'd bumble around and mess everything up and they were always either crying and whiny or incredibly cocky, claiming they could kill ten Southerners with one shot. Dumbasses, all of them.

And he always had to be the one to teach them.

He marched out of his tent and reached the line where some fresh and clean uniformed men and boys were milling around. Today, there were only six recruits gathered from a total of seven cities. Most of them were crying. The cocky ones had joined right away when they heard there was a war so all that was left in the city were middle aged men and boys under eight.

_I knew it,_ thought Sasuke bitterly.

Somebody screamed and began crying and waving his arms around. His rifle had discharged and went off. There were no medics rushing forward so he obviously had not shot himself. He was a lucky one.

_Why do I always get stuck with the idiots? _Sasuke groaned.

The training was going to kill them.

xx

Sakura felt like screaming. A new guy (whom Sakura had to admit, should have a memorial built in his honor because he was just that hot) had come and trained the scraggly group. No, more like tortured them. They ran on the border of the camp while the captain jogged next to them and tried to shove them in the electric fence with a long pointy stick. Apparently, it increased their 'endurance and dexterity'.

Then, a hundred push ups were assigned and a hundred sit ups. And when her body could do no more, he had made each of them one by one carry the big man as the ran a lap around the fence again.

After that, he had assigned them to their companies. Sakura had been put in Company A Platoon One. It was an infantry so naturally, they were the shortest on people.

Sakura stumbled inside of the tent and collapsed on an empty cot that somebody had laid out for her. It smelled suspiciously like rotten eggs and shrimp. The captain had trained them until it was very late, so all the other members of her platoon were asleep. From deeper inside the tent, she heard a rumbling snore.

Too tired to change out of her uniform, she collapsed on her cot.

xx

A/N: The intro to my AU story. Lulz. D

It's pretty short actually but I really need to do homework and this is just the intro.

So this idea struck me as I was watching Mulan (which is the most kick ass movie in the entire world, almost besides Lion King, Letters From Iwo Jima, and American Pastime.)

Whoah, like, all of my favorite movies are about WWII. I have a really unhealthy obsession. And I _would have_ liked Flags of Our Fathers but it was confusing.

But I have no idea how to fit the Naruto girls in because in this AU, girls don't go all military. It's kind of an old fashioned world, except for all the rioting and stuff. So I have no idea. Whatever, it'll come to me.

Also, excuse me if my military talk is a little...bad. My military vocabulary comes from the pile of Reader's Digests in my room and all the war movies I've watched with my dad. And that HBO special about WWII.


End file.
